Brits team up with MIT students for cyber security hackathon

Thursday

Amidst global concerns over data privacy, students at MIT and the University of Cambridge participated in a 24-hour “hackathon” last Friday to aid in the initiative against cyber attacks.

The event, Cambridge 2 Cambridge (C2C), was announced last year by President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Students from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, collaborated in the multi-day competition.

Rahul Sridhar, a sophomore at MIT, participated on team “Class Warfare.” Sridhar said he became interested in cybersecurity after taking a security class at MIT, and thought the competition would be a lot of fun.

“The goal of the event was to bring the University of Cambridge and MIT together to talk with each other and get everyone excited to learn about cybersecurity,” he said.

According to Sridhar, participants passed a preliminary test before qualifying for the competition. The qualification tournament required an individual task with questions regarding different areas of security, Sridhar said. Of the 30 individuals who participated, 22 moved on to the final round.

The competition had six teams of four, with two players per team representing MIT and two from the University of Cambridge. The hackathon was set up in the style of “Capture the Flag,” so each team defended their own computer system while attempting to break into other teams’ systems, Sridhar said.

Each team had a set of services to maintain, and checked every five minutes that they were up and running. Teams had to patch their own services so their systems couldn’t be broken into, while at the same time finding vulnerabilities in other teams’ systems to steal their flags.

The C2C competition involved several challenges, Sridhar said, and he found the lock-picking event to be the most unique. According to Sridhar, the participants were provided lock picks and tools, along with a brief introduction of the task. The challengers were then timed, and the top four individuals were brought into the finals tournament, Sridhar said.

Sridhar said the only preparation for the event was regular computer practice and attending similar competitions. Much of the hacking process is learning different tricks and tools, and the best way to gain experience is by participating, he said.

“Each of the challenges were doable, but they weren’t so hard that I was frustrated,” he said.

Sridhar said he enjoyed meeting his teammates and seeing how they approached the different challenges.

“It was very exciting,” he said. “Cybersecurity is a lot of fun.”

The C2C exercises were related to web security, reverse engineering, cryptography, binary exploitation and forensics. Cash prizes, provided by Microsoft, were awarded to winning groups at the end of the competition.

The $15,000 "Top Hacking Team" prize was awarded to MIT students Cheng Chen and Fuchs, and Cambridge University students Alex Dalgleish and Gabor Szarka. The $5,000 "Top Hacker" prize was given to MIT student Julian Fuchs.